Tag: How

Watching Tiger this spring reminded me of an old Roger Federer quote. A new Tiger biography released March 27, written by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian, exhaustively details Tiger’s childhood, his meteoric rise and fall, scandals and all. “My goal all along had been that, by playing and winning golf, I could somehow help golfers, and perhaps people outside the game, be color blind,” Tiger wrote in the book “The 1997 Masters: My Story” co-written with Lorne Rubenstein. The second time Trump and Tiger played, “Get Out” director Jordan Peele retweeted a video of Trump and Tiger together with the caption “Now you’re in The Sunken Place” and the tweet went viral, but any controversy over the round quickly faded. The last thing anyone wants is to see Tiger double over pain at the 13th tee at the Masters because he has just seen Bubba Watson drive one over the trees and carry the dogleg and his ego can’t resist swinging so hard and Tiger reaches his breaking point. I recently spoke to Golf Channel analyst and occasional Tiger Woods skeptic Brandel Chamblee, and we were joking about what it’s like to be on the record, as both of us are, about how a Tiger comeback was unlikely. Rose: You don’t? Tiger: No. Rose: You’ve accepted that? Tiger: I’ve accepted I’m going to get more. Another generation of golf fans – my kids, your kids, Tiger’s kids – will get to witness some magic that seemed, not long ago, improbable.

Perfectionists are motivated to make the absolute best choice – even when doing so isn’t strictly necessary. Since perfectionists tend to ruminate over even tiny mistakes, they’re strongly motivated to attempt to recover situations involving sunk costs. Perfectionists can spend too long working on marginally productive activities before moving on. Perfectionists want to feel absolutely ready before taking on challenges. For the most part, perfectionists tend to apply their extremely rigorous standards to only themselves. One reason perfectionists are so strongly motivated to avoid small mistakes is because making them triggers their tendency to ruminate. Heuristics are a great method of prioritizing for perfectionists. Because perfectionists want to be flawless, they’re typically dismissive of incremental gains.

Then came the fake news, News Feed addiction, violence on Facebook Live, cyberbullying, abusive ad targeting, election interference and, most recently, the Cambridge Analytica app data privacy scandals. The more benign leaks merely cost Facebook a bit of competitive advantage. Policy-focused leaks have exacerbated the backlash against Facebook, putting more pressure on the conscience of employees. As blame fell to Facebook for Trump’s election, word of Facebook prototyping a censorship tool for operating in China escaped, triggering questions about its respect for human rights and free speech. A source close to several Facebook executives tells us they feel “Embarrassed to work there” and are increasingly open to other job opportunities. If Facebook can’t internally discuss the problems it faces without being exposed, how can it solve them? Facebook doesn’t have the same internal work culture problems as some giants like Uber. Now Zuckerberg will have to figure out how to get Facebook to cautiously foresee the consequences of what it says and does while remaining an appealing place to work.

Companies differ in how they cultivate relationships, in how much they value collaboration, and in how much face time is required to get work done and make important decisions. When you arrive in your new organization, ask insiders how you should approach relationships. When you start a new job, look at how people tend to communicate with one another. Pay attention to how information is typically packaged for meetings, the extent to which issues are debated versus “Checked off,” and how deferential people are to those in positions of power. How companies make decisions also varies in important ways. The question you want to ask is, what is your own bias for action, and how does it fit your new culture? One cue is to listen for how people discuss their work in meetings. Most organizations will hire you for past experiences, but your future success there will be determined by your impact in your new environment – and depending on how well you understand and work within your new culture, your impact can be amplified or derailed.

With hundreds of toys at their disposal, kids jump from one activity for another, never immersing themselves completely in one activity. Kids are more likely to use what they have to invent games with their imagination when they have fewer choices for toys and materials. Kids with fewer toy choices have better social skills. Kids with fewer toys learn to appreciate what they have. Kids with fewer toys are less likely to take them for granted. Kids with fewer toys can be taught to focus on books, art, and experiences. Kids with fewer toys learn problem solving and perseverance more quickly than children who have tons of toys. When kids have a ton of toys and can’t figure out how one of them works, they may be more likely to give up and go onto another, easier toy.

Some of the scientists working on the new exercise guidelines decided that they would need to mount a major new study themselves. For the new study, which was published this month in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the scientists chose data about 4,840 men and women past the age of 40 who had worn activity trackers. Using the accelerometer readouts, the scientists determined how many minutes per day, in total, each person had spent in moderate or vigorous physical activity. If it were shorter than five minutes, it was considered to be sporadic physical activity, such as walking down the hallway or up a brief flight of stairs. If people walked continuously for five minutes or longer, meaning in exercise bouts, they lowered their risk of dying young. “The message is that all physical activity counts,” says Dr. William Kraus, a professor at Duke University who conducted the study with researchers from the National Cancer Institute. “The little things that people do every day,” like walking from their cars to the office or climbing a flight of stairs, “Can and do add up and affect the risk for disease and death,” he says. “If you can’t go for a long walk,” he says, “a few short walks are likely to be just as good for you.”

Sam texts Penny asking for fashion advice; Penny texts Sam about how much she hates maraschino cherries. How did you think about what kind of tone you wanted for Penny and Sam’s texts? If you do lean on text to do the heavy lifting in terms of creating a safe and intimate space for them, it had to not feel like text. Beck: There’s a super interesting paradox about texting that I’ve been thinking about lately. Americans text more than they call, and texting is the primary form of communication for most people, especially younger generations. Choi: Penny is so trusting with such a tiny social circle that she has wallpaper push notifications for her texts. In the book, every time Penny and Sam have some kind of new communication, moving from texting to phone calls or seeing each other in person, they call it “Escalating.” You wouldn’t have as many levels to escalate up through in the past because it was only phone or in person and that’s it. You’re like, “Oh I won’t call them because it’s so rude of me to want my friend to carve out 15 minutes to talk to me.” So you text instead. And it’s kind of sad. Choi: It always reminds me of the Looney Tunes [gophers].

A few months ago, on a college tour, our 18-year-old son announced that he had found his purpose and future career: He wants to do stand-up comedy. The fact is, he’s got some talent in this area. He’s comfortable onstage, he’s a great physical comedian, he can do accents, he’s charming and funny. At the same time, at 18, he’s undisciplined, he’s a procrastinator, and he gets debilitating migraine headaches when he is sleep-deprived, dehydrated, malnourished, or stressed. Thankfully, he’s not saying, “Mom, I’m skipping college and heading to New York City, and I want you to support me financially while I pursue this dream.” He wants to go to a small college, take theater and writing classes, and take advantage of opportunities to be funny onstage during the “Safe” years of college. He’s passionate about comedy and thoughtful about how much risk he can tolerate. In the world you both live in, there are people just like your son who have talent and drive and eventually find success doing the very thing they love most. Even if your son doesn’t become the next Chris Rock or Jerry Seinfeld, he can leverage his charisma and confidence onstage and his ability to write well and make people laugh into a range of professions that seek those skills: public speaker, trial litigator, advertising copywriter, professor, sitcom writer, or entrepreneur, to name just a few.

Can certain interior design features make you hungry for a hamburger? Some would say yes, and McDonald’s offers a master class in how to do it. Consultant Luke Battye studied the fast food chain’s new “Experience of the future” restaurants and explained how their design sways customers in recent advice published on BehavioralEconomics.com. The new design seems to be working for McDonald’s. On digital menu displays in the restaurants, McDonald’s uses subtle animation to direct customers’ attention away from the lower-priced value meal options and point them toward the pricier ones. To help us feel better about that, McDonald’s deploys the “Health halo.” They show a photo of a salad or bottled water on the menu display, which, studies show, makes customers perceive the entire menu to be healthier. Of course, McDonald’s – which did not respond to requests for comment on these strategies – isn’t the only restaurant that uses these techniques. Food retailers try everything from menu fonts to the color of the walls to influence how much a customer eats, how their food tastes, and how long they stay. Some of McDonald’s menu items reportedly have more sugar and salt now than they did 30 years ago, despite concerns about the health effects of sweets and sodium.

From the unmatched wonder of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat to the sprawling majesty of the temples of Bagan in Myanmar. From Egypt’s Great Sphinx of Giza to the extraordinary carved city of Petra in Jordan. The wonders of the ancient world have long cast a spell over travelers from every corner of the globe. A quick check of any ‘most popular tourist attractions in the world’ list will likely throw up more ancient man-made sites than modern attractions or natural wonders, with Machu Picchu, the Great Wall of China, the Acropolis and Rome’s Colosseum regular contenders for the top spot. We’ve long been fascinated by our past as and how it shapes our future – how people lived, what technologies they had, what their homes and public spaces looked like and just how they built these extraordinary edifices without modern machinery. It’s often tough to really get a sense of what these ancient buildings would have looked like in their heyday – many were resplendent in gold and other finery, intricately carved and finished with elements no modern tourist can ever see and would struggle to imagine. We can see what seven of the great ancient ruins of the world would have looked like to those who lived with them at their peak. Casting views from the hilltop at the Acropolis citadel in Athens, Greece, the Parthenon is a true ancient wonder whose Doric architecture has been ravaged by time and war.